7 Things That Could Totally Kill Weed Legalization's Buzz

Posted:
04/18/2014 2:03 pm EDT
Updated:
04/18/2014 2:59 pm EDT

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 19: Dave Warden, a bud tender at Private Organic Therapy (P.O.T.), a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary, displays various types of marijuana available to patients on October 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. Attorney General Eric Holder announced new guidelines today for federal prosecutors in states where the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is allowed under state law. Federal prosecutors will no longer trump the state with raids on the sou | David McNew via Getty Images

Kleiman is the renowned drug policy expert brought in by Washington state to provide advice as it navigates the road to legal marijuana markets. Unlike Colorado, where recreational marijuana shops have been operating since January, Washington dispensaries won't open their doors until June or July.

While he thinks the process is going "reasonably well" in Washington, Kleiman identified a number of major concerns he has with the trajectory of the legalization push in America.

Here are seven of his biggest worries:

1. Not enough weed on opening day in Washington

Supply probably won't meet demand in Washington, at least in the early stages of pot sales. Kleiman points to the "teething pains" experienced in Colorado as some dispensaries coped with shortages.

“Opening day in Colorado there was a product shortage, and prices spiked," Kleiman told HuffPost. "I expect you’ll see the same thing in Washington.

2. The hazy legal situation of medicinal pot in Washington

While Colorado's recreational pot sales built upon a well-established, elaborate medicinal network, Washington state lacks any coherent form of existing medicinal pot regulation, even though the drug is already legal there for medical purposes. A bill that would have brought the medical marijuana system under state control died in the state legislature last month, thrusting the dynamic between medical and recreational sales into uncertainty. Kleiman calls the existing system a "free-for-all."

"Washington is going to be opening commercial stores, with fairly high taxes and fairly stiff regs, that have to compete with medical outlets that are completely untaxed and unregulated," said Kleiman. "It’s not a stable situation."

3. The safety hazards of edible marijuana

Kleiman believes that one of the troubling problems that has emerged from Colorado since January is children accidentally consuming sweet marijuana edibles.

"I don’t think there’s any justification to selling cannabis in candy form," said Kleiman. "It’s a drug, people should be aware of its druginess."

At a minimum, Kleiman argues, edibles should be more clearly labeled, individually packed, and take a "Hersey Bar" approach that segments out recommended doses.

4. Marijuana becoming super cheap

Despite relatively high taxes, Kleiman is worried that the price of cannabis will collapse as soon as competitors flood the market. And were marijuana to be farmed at the same level of efficiency as other crops, the cost of a joint's worth of intoxicating power would plummet to just a nickel, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University professor Jonathan Caulkins.

Kleiman believes a price like that would be "way too low" and encourage excessive consumption.

5. The emergence of "Big Pot" and commercialization

This is probably one of Kleiman's biggest concerns when it comes to the future of pot in America. He fears that industry interests will hijack the legalization movement and that public health will be neglected in favor of profits.

"The fact that the National Cannabis Industry Association has hired itself a K Street suit [lobbyist] is not a good sign," Kleiman said. "The industry has interests that are different from the public interest, and the more powerful those interests are, the harder it will be to get appropriate legislation."

Kleiman said he fears that marijuana could morph into a predatory advertising and lobbying body, much like tobacco and alcohol. He thinks marijuana will be marketed at people with substance abuse problems, rather than to responsible, occasional users.

"By the time Congress gets around to acting on this, we’ll be locked into a commercial system, which I think is the worst alternative to prohibition," he said.

6. The potential for pot abuse

Kleiman argues that there will be a significant number of pot smokers who suffer from their habits, due to pointed marketing, widespread access and cheap products. He thinks there should be tighter individual quotas in order to curb overconsumption.

"So much of the debate about cannabis consists of denying the obvious on both sides. Yes, current prohibition is really unsatisfactory. Yes, legalization will mean more drug abuse," he said.

Ultimately, though, it will be a net public health "win" if rising pot consumption deters heavy drinking, which does much more societal and personal damage, Kleiman said.

7. Unreliable data and hype

In the lead up to marijuana legalization, there have been a lot of predictions about just how big the market for the drug could become. A widely circulated study forecasted that legal marijuana will be an $8 billion industry by 2018. Another calculation estimated that 175,000 jobs have already been created by marijuana. However, Kleiman cautions that its too soon to be making grand predictions about the ultimate size of the market, especially because he thinks the price of pot is likely to collapse.

"A lot of this is just around fleecing the [marijuana] investors," Kleiman said. "But it is completely plausible that markets would be that large."

For now, we must just wait and see how the experiment plays out in Washington and Colorado.

"The doors are open, that’s all you can tell," Kleiman said.

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Only 7 percent of Americans think the United States is winning the war on drugs, and few Americans are interested in throwing down more money to try to win, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released in 2012.

Mexican authorities seized almost 70,000 weapons of U.S. origin from 2007 to 2011. In 2004, the U.S. Congress declined to renew a 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons. They quickly became the guns of choice for Mexican drug cartels.
Some 60,000 people have died in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched a military assault on the cartels in 2006.

Americans have the highest rate of illegal drug consumption in the world, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Several current and former Latin American presidents, like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, have urged the United States to rethink its failed war on drugs, to no avail.

In an attempt to track guns as they moved across the U.S.-Mexico border, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms allowed smugglers to purchase weapons. The ATF lost track of the guns and they wound up in the hands of drug cartels -- even as far south as Colombia.

Though the subject of marijuana legalization regularly ranks among the most popular at the digital town halls President Obama takes part in, he declines to address the issue or give it a thoughtful answer.
Incidentally, a younger Obama supported marijuana decriminalization and a rethinking of the drug war.

Almost 800 prisoners accused of terrorism have have been held at the U.S. military prison of Guantánamo, Cuba, where they are detained indefinitely without facing trial. The United States has drawn international criticism from human rights defenders for subjecting the detainees there to torture and other cruel treatment. The Cuban government opposes hosting the U.S. naval base on its soil.

The United States has the world's largest prison population by far -- largely fed by the war on drugs -- at 500 per 100,000 people.

Because the United States imprisons roughly 400,000 immigrants each year on civil violations.

The U.S. Border Patrol has come under fire for killing minors who were throwing rocks.

When opponents of leftwing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez briefly ousted him in 2002, the United States not only failed to condemn the coup, it praised the coup leaders.

When Colombia demobilized the largest rightwing paramilitary organization in 2006, if offered lenient sentences to those who would offer details on the atrocities the AUC committed. But rather than facing justice in their home country, Colombia has extradited several paramilitary leaders to the United States to face drug trafficking charges -- marking it harder for people like Bela Henríquez to find out the details surrounding the murders of their loved ones.
"More than anger, I feel powerless," Henriquez, whose father, Julio, was kidnapped and killed on the orders of one defendant, told ProPublica. "We don't know what they are negotiating, what conditions they are living under. What guarantee of justice do we have?"

The U.S funded the Guatemalan military during the 1960s and 1970s anti-insurgency war, despite awareness of widespread human rights violations. Among the recipients of U.S military funding and training were the Kaibiles, a special force unit responsible for several massacres. Former Kaibiles have joined the ranks of the Zetas drug cartel.

The rightwing military dictatorship that took over Argentina in 1976 "disappeared" some 30,000 people, according to estimates by several human rights organizations. They subjected countless others to sadistic forms of torture and stole dozens of babies from mothers they jailed and murdered. The military junta carried out the so-called "Dirty War" with the full knowledge and support of the Nixon administration.

When it became clear that socialist Salvador Allende would likely win the presidency in Chile, U.S. President Richard Nixon told the CIA to "make the economy scream" in order to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," according to the National Security Archive.
Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende in a bloody coup on Sept. 11, 1973, torturing and disappearing thousands of his political rivals with the backing of the U.S. government.

The Brazilian military overthrew the democratically elected government of João Goulart in 1964, with the enthusiastic support of President Lyndon Johnson, ushering in two decades of repressive government.

The Reagan administration funded the Contra rebels against the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Regarded by many as terrorists, the Contras murdered, tortured and raped civilians. When human rights organizations reported on the crimes, the Reagan administration accused them of working on behalf of the Sandinistas.

Through Plan Colombia, the U.S. has pumped over $6 billion into Colombia's military and intelligence service since 2002. The intelligence service has been disbanded for spying on the Supreme Court and carrying out smear campaigns against the justices, as well as journalists, members of Congress and human rights activists. The military faces numerous allegations of human rights abuse, including the practice of killing non-combatants from poor neighborhoods and dressing them up as guerrillas to inflate enemy casualty statistics.

For 21 years, the U.N. has condemned the U.S. embargo against Cuba and for 21 years the United States has ignored it.
Some 188 nations voted against the embargo this year, with only the U.S. itself, Israel, Palau opposing.

At the behest of United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation with extensive holdings in Central America, the CIA helped engineer the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, ushering in decades of civil war that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

El Salvador's military committed atrocities throughout the 1980s with U.S. funding.

Woodrow Wilson ordered the Marines to invade and occupy Haiti in 1915 after the assassination of the Haitian president. The troops didn't leave until 1934.

One invasion wasn't good enough. The U.S. military returned in 1994.

The School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, trained soldiers and generals responsible for massacres and torture of tens of thousands of Latin Americans, according to Al Jazeera.

The so-called "Spanish-American War" began in 1868 with the first of a series of three wars for Cuban independence. In 1898, the U.S. got involved, invading Cuba and occupying the island after forcing Spain to give it. The United States then forced Cuba to accept the odious Platt Amendent to its Constitution, which allowed the United States to intervene in the country militarily and established the U.S. military base at Guantánamo.

As long as you're invading Cuba, why not take Puerto Rico as well? The United States invaded in 1898 and the island remains a U.S. territory today.